Technolandy

Day 24 (of 2024/25) Comic Book Library Share: Uncle $crooge – my favourite titles in my collection – hopefully a favourite in our school library! Thanks @jasonaaron and @theatlantic and @rosehorowitch

Comic books are important portals into building rigour into reading… a recent Atlantic article https://apple.news/AVNDbZdXnSLKRA0DRN8qkKQ complained about the lack of ‘big books’ being read in schools… and I can’t help but wonder if we need to restructure more of our approaches to a) have a wide variety of reading materials available and b) have more adults model reading for entertainment – I’m going to be mindfully reading more for ‘a break’ in our common area and study hall… 

And yes, people will continue to be dismissive of comic books and graphic novels – many would prefer a more scientific approach to reading (I’m a whole language follower, which means we need to teach the ‘whole part’ of reading – from phonics to inference to phonological to synthesis etc)and know that these books are empowering – and there is a reason why the latest comics have a ‘suggested age range’ because they sure aren’t all for ‘little kids’… amazing plots, deep connections, so much good stuff for the reading brain – and I’ll be sharing more connected to our Comic Book Library each Monday!

Comic Book Library Episode #1

$crooge McDuck

I was so excited to see that a new Uncle Scrooge comic came out – Uncle Scrooge and the Infinity Dime – by Jason Aaron. And the opening letter echos so much of what I echo when Jason shared “Why I Love This Duck”. Uncle Scrooge is one of the greatest adventurer characters in comic book history. 

But it is so expandable – as I learned when first exploring the amazing Uncle $crooge – his life and times, the legacy of Carl Barks (written and drawn by) is amazing. The work and research that he (and his wife) put into each story… and as the introduction to that collection indicates.. George Lucas himself highlights how much he enjoyed and learned from the stories of Carl Barks… the storytelling… the details… the research that went into these ‘comics’ continue to be influential and inspiring… definitely got me onto the track for my double major in English Literature and History… and then as a teacher/librarian/principal…

First appearance was “Christmas on Bear Mountain” – a delightful addition the family that started with Donald Duck and expanded to Huey Dewey and Louie (great spelling example of how different spellings = same sounds in English) – which in turn started as a newspaper strip before evolving into a longer form comic (or series of shorts – much as there are novels and short stories, likewise are there various structures within the realm of “comic books”.  – so I’ll give a shoutout to Bob Karp who created Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold – which was given to Carl Barks to illustrate (with Jack Hannah of hannah-barbera fame).

So, today we are doing a bigger share of what our schools new Comic Book Library includes – and I can’t help but ensure that one of the most important collections features this character – I have ‘loaned’ my traceback copy of Life and Times of Uncle Scrooge to the shelf – and have seen a couple of students take a read of it – to my delight (my hardcover remains at home) but it inspired me to add some of the Disney treasuries to our ‘sign-outable’ collection!

But I will be keeping my larger collection of single issues safely at home… but I am a bad ‘collector’ in the sense that most/all of my comics have been read multiple times (again, I mis-read the tip that “good readers re-read” thinking that it meant re-read books & stories, not re-read unfamiliar words…) and want that mindset to infuse our comic library – some hardbound versions for multiple viewings, but also having a range of other books that we know will end up … well loved (that’s what I call my stack of books that don’t have covers with the comic-con activity challenge: can comics without covers still be loved? <— so far, yes – teachers and students are finding them here and there and everywhere… and is a reason why I will also have a ‘box of comics’ for exploration as per the community set up ‘lending library’ where books can be borrowed and new ones can be added into the box for others to explore… a new collection every week!

As for Uncle Scrooge – I loved that a student, for our comic con last June, asked me what my favourite was – obviously “Only a Poor Old Man” and then she went and found the cover and recreated it for me… fitting since a number of decades ago, I did similar when for an art class, I was also doing some re-creating of comic covers – enlarging them using the school photocopier and then adding colours to make large-format illustrations… I wonder what happened to them… 

As for the Infinity Dime… Jason Aaron channels his inner Carl Barks and Don Rosa (the fabulous artist/writer who made so many fabulous books under the Gladstone/Disney publication cycle) to create a book that has so many great callbacks – ‘parachutes are for softies’ harkens back to Scrooge making his fortune “by being tougher than the toughies and smarter than the smarties  and I made it square” 

But how delicious – to explore what would’ve happened if there was a misturn and that Christmas at Bear Mountain never happened… I mean the multiverse of McDucks… an absolute delight – especially with the Beagle Boys and of course – unleashing all the Donalds… delightful – and for context, this years edition does include that Bear Mountain …

Gotta say: Go to your local comic book store and get a copy of the Infinity Dime – to have it plus the first appearance of Uncle Scrooge might get you wanting to explore some other collections!